Six Ways Barbara andor Ian Might Have Died
by bookEnd
Summary: And One Way They Never Did. Across the timelines, fates diverge. What could have been might be, somewhere.


A/N: Many, many thanks to both livii and Paranoid Seat, for all the help they gave on this.

* * *

_Splinter_

She's thirteen years old and falling in a crumpled heap on the road as the car speeds away.

Barbara sits by her and holds her hand. She tells her about studying for her O-levels; about that boy at university, Henry something or other, who tried to get her drunk; about quieting a class with a single look; about going to the junkyard that night; about travelling in space and time; about the wonders and terrors of the universe and how sometimes they are one and the same.

She tells her about everything that might be in her future; everything she might do differently but will never have a chance to experience in a calm, steady voice, not wobbling, not cracking.

The girl's last breath is a sigh and she dies with her eyes open, looking into what might have been.

* * *

_Stealth_

Cold.

Anger is a fierce, hot flame that burns brightly, so brightly: no room for anything else. He'd given in to that impulse, that oblivion; he'd let it rage through him, loud and bright and hot. It gave him something to feel; something to fill the emptiness; something to banish the darkness.

"You _lied_!" he'd shouted, his voice joining yet dwarfed by the crackle of the flames, anything to drown out sobs and screams and the ghastly silence waiting and waiting for her next breath.

The Doctor, genuinely distressed, "I had to hope- I thought- but the poison must have done too much damage", but only background noise to the roaring fire and thump, thump, thump of his heart, reminding him with every beat that he's alive and she's not, not, not.

"What use is hope?" he'd demanded. His fault, the Doctor's fault, all their faults and he should have done _something. _"Barbara's dead."

The word, that word, was final, definite. Dead, dead and gone. It was cold water on the fire and vast empty darkness, the void of space and time, threatened to overwhelm him. Susan's distant sobs of grief and misery were suddenly so much louder.

"Why don't you talk to Susan?" Still speaking, he turned away from the Doctor. "Tell her that."

Barbara's hand is cold and her heart is still. Ian is numb, frozen from the inside out. He doesn't have to feel.

* * *

_Shadow_

"The doctor," and the lack of a capital letter is clear in her speech, "wanted to know…" She stops, breathes, lifts her gaze from their clasped hands to his face. "He wanted to know if we had ever been exposed to high, dangerously high, levels of radiation."

* * *

_Soundless_

"Barbara, what happened? What was that?"

Ian notices he's gripping her arm tightly, his fingers digging in in a way that must be painful and relaxes his grip in the instant before she looks up from the watch.

What he sees in her eyes terrifies him. "What have you done to Barbara?"

"I'm sorry," she says, softly, sadly. "Barbara's gone."

* * *

_Stranded_

Ian has never seen the TARDIS take off – dematerialise – before. It's loud, so much louder than it sounds in the console room.

He never wants to see it again. Only the reverse, when the Doctor realises his mistake. It must have been a mistake.

He knows from experience what the chances are of the TARDIS returning to the right place at the right time, but his head can't stop his heart hoping.

He's left alone on an alien planet, on the wrong side of the universe. He has no idea of the time period, relative to Earth, but sometimes he likes to think that it's the mid 20th century. Sometimes he prefers to believe he's stranded in time as well as space. It puts home at a far greater distance; it can help with the frustration he encounters daily in this struggling medieval society.

Nothing stops him from hearing the TARDIS' return in every creak of wood, every human or animal bellow, every night in his dreams.

* * *

_Sacrifice_

The whispers echo through the underground. Names, names they both know, recited in a list but always the same name ending the list, giving rare hope.

"_Jo Jones, Matthew Jones, Ianto Jones"_ are among the first names of the fallen.

It makes sense in a warped way; the Master probably has – had a special grudge against Jo, encountering her more times than any of the rest of them.

Brigadier Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart dies spectacularly in battle.

They laugh over how he's proved the Doctor and his predictions of death by old age wrong. They've forgotten how to cry.

"_Don't go near Sarah Jane's" _is the warning the whispers carry the day Sarah Jane blows up her house on Bannerman Road and she and her remaining family go into hiding. Nothing is left, nothing that the Master can use. But she seems to locate a printing press quickly and soon illegal newsletters, leaflets, propaganda are circulating with frequent quotes from a certain Harriet Jones.

They hand them out to those who stay with them.

And Martha Jones walks the earth, telling stories of the Doctor.

They pass on stories, newsletters, whispers to all those who stay, maybe for a night, maybe for a few weeks, at this 'safe' house. It's no safer than anywhere else on the surface of the Earth, really, but when their friends leave, and they do all leave, they carry a little piece of hope with them, ready to give to others they meet.

* * *

"The Toclafane are coming!" Michael shouts, flinging himself through the door.

The message spreads quickly amongst the inhabitants. Ian and Barbara gather them together and herd them out through the back door.

"Come with us," Hannah begs.

"Coming to find you. Coming to find you!" the Toclafane sing in their revolting childish way.

It's in the cutlery drawer, next to the spoons. One gun. One bullet.

Ian turns at the metallic click.

"Barbara, no."

"They scream, Ian. They scream for such a long time. Vicki screamed. Those things made me watch. Our daughter and I could do nothing. They hurt her and I couldn't help her." She's perfectly lucid, perfectly calm. "I won't let them hurt you."

"Leave you alone to face those things?"

"Yes."

"Over my-" He realises what he's saying.

"Yes, Ian. Exactly." Her smile is lopsided, broken. "Goodbye, darling."

"Goodbye, Barbara." He takes a deep breath and closes his eyes. "Thank you." For everything. For convincing me to come along to that junkyard. For a fantastic life.

The gunshot fills the kitchen just as laughter did in happy times. The gun drops and skids across the floor, disappearing under a cupboard.

Barbara stands there and waits for the Toclafane. Her eyes sting but she doesn't cry. She's forgotten how to cry.

* * *

_Survivors_

The Doctor stands in the middle of the living room and holds up both hands, one outspread and one in the worldwide thumbs-up gesture.

"Six words," Ian, Barbara and Martha chorus, sitting together on the settee in front of him.

Behind him, the television is in bits, halfway through his improvement process.

Curling his fingers in, he holds up one finger.

"First word."

He glances around the room and moves over to the clock, which he gestures at repeatedly.

"Clock."

"Hand."

"Nine."

To each wrong suggestion, he shakes his head impatiently.

"Time!" they all exclaim.

He has a sneaking suspicion they all got it in the first instance and played along, but he can't even attempt to pretend to be vaguely irritated.

His past and his present sit in front of him and they get along well together and they're happy and so, so vibrantly alive.

In a hundred years linear time, Ian and Barbara will have gone. In a hundred years crazy-paving time, his time, Martha will have gone. How, he doesn't want to think about.

But no-one ever truly leaves him. They'll always be in his memory, in his hearts. Those he loves never die.


End file.
